mum

I won’t call it an epiphany. Lightbulbs can’t take this long to come on. Call it a lingering, teasing subconscious knowing.

Ask me about my earliest memories and all I can summon up are impressions. Emotions, colours, oblique images of sunlight and green leaves and running running running. Imagination is a good word. In my head. Always in my mind.

My earliest cohesive memory is of the day my father left home. Chasing after him as he charged through the front door. Mum and dad had spent what felt like days in their room. I walked in at one point and was immediately turned out again. Memories are unreliable at the best of times. This is what I recall.

Divorcing couples is mundane. The significance of this event has less to do with the details and the drama. For me, it was the moment I had to confront a world outside of myself.

I worshipped my father. He was funny, kind, knowledgable, creative. Over the years I resented my mother because she dealt in what’s practical, what’s necessary; while it was all magic with him. Over time I matured and became wise to the wonder in her too, as well as appreciating the sacrifices and true value of everything she had done for me and my brother. I can’t say I ever hated my father. I resented what followed in his wake.

Calling it “The Damage” may be a little extreme. My comic strip mentality wants to call it an “activation event” – a shock preceding a critical change. Looking back I consider that my whole life has been about the fissure between my outer and inner worlds: again a fairly mundane struggle, but more overt in people “like us”.

The other night I was casually regarding my toes. Picturing what my feet would look like with certain ones cut off. Considering the permutations and how my walking would be affected. I haven’t cut myself in nearly ten years but I think about it every day. When I wake up and before I go to sleep. My right arm, which took the brunt of all the Red back in the day, feels heavy. Sometimes like lead; and I just leave it hanging it at my side as I walk

Is there any worth in writing a suicide note, even if you have no cause or intention to follow up on its promise? Should it be something everyone does – setting out the reasons you want or need it to stop, in the hope that you’re heading off trouble ahead of time? Sign offs have never appealed to me, because you can never cover everything and honestly why would you leave that behind? Something tangible, crafted in your misery, tainting the fingertips of those you’ve left behind.

I won’t call it an epiphany, because deep down I’ve always known. I’m waiting for it to stop. That it’ll end “before my time” seems inevitable to me. I cannot cross the divide – I’m still that little boy caught between two worlds, and the bleed is too much to take on sometimes. I have to be this way because all bases must be covered.